The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

Dear Carolyn: I cheated on my ex. I’m extremely ashamed of this part of my past.

I understand now why I did it: to avoid facing a painful reality, and to avoid sharing my
feelings with my ex because I was afraid of his reaction. I’ve grown immensely since then.

Now, I am dating again. I’m afraid of sharing the details of my past with prospective partners
because they’ll think, “Once a cheater, always a cheater” — which, granted, is what I thought
before I found myself in that boat.

At what point in a new relationship do I open up about this? If it is a deal-breaker for
someone, he should know as early as possible so he can make an informed decision about being with
me. But I also want to feel that he knows enough about me to understand me and possibly grant some
compassion for the confused, hurting girl I once was.

— S.

Dear S: You bring it up when it comes up, be it the first date or the 40th, as you would any
other aspect of your past. Do I minimize cheating by suggesting this? Perhaps, but that isn’t my
intent. I’m merely arguing that your infidelity was not some isolated, atypical appendage to the
rest of your life that has to be offered up and explained. It was, and is, a point on your
progression through life. A significant and bad one, sure, one you’d be wrong to go out of your way
to conceal. But a date would be just as wrong to judge you solely on this incident.

Your cheating had context that warrants just as much concern and attention from a prospective
partner as this single outcome.

Your cheating was about painful-truth avoidance, right? So your immaturity is that meaningful
context — including its source and manifestations (cheating surely wasn’t the only one), and your
progress in overcoming it. The “details about my past” are the trees; potential partners owe each
other the forest.

Conveniently, that is also what you owe yourself. With the cheating and whatever else you have
done and will do wrong, as well as the good things you bring to this earth. View yourself as a
flawed, complicated and evolving whole, one who doesn’t lie to herself or others about her
limitations, or exaggerate her gifts — and who deserves someone who will embrace her as such.

Once you’re comfortable with yourself in this way, the question of what, when and how to tell
will all but take care of itself.
Write to Carolyn Hax — whose column appears on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays — at
tellme@washpost.com.